The 10 Greatest Fictional Sports Ever Invented

The line between nerd and sports fan is almost invisible when you get down to it: Is there really that much of a difference between a cosplayer wearing a bathrobe and waving a glow-stick at comic-con, and a fat high school burnout wearing a $200 Walter Payton throwback jersey while referring to the Bears in the first person plural? Whedon groupies and Jim Rome's clone army share the same doomed wish. But at least the jocks pine to matter in sports that actually exist. For the rest of us, we can always dream of sports like...

#10. Dom-Jot (Star Trek)

How the Game is Played:

You hit a ball with the tip of a stick, rolling it along the top of a felt covered table littered with obstructions, impeding the ball's progress and providing targets for the player to hit. The game is essentially a combination of pool and pinball. According to the Memory Alpha wiki, "rolling the terik into straight nines is considered an extremely skilled move." Nobody who has ever actually worked on an episode of Star Trek knows what the fuck that means.

Lasting Impact:

Almost none. It's the "coolest" sport in Star Trek by default, since the only other choice is best represented by this picture:

Will's got his eyes on the prize, as usual.

Awesomeosity Factor:

1.3 out of 10 - It is a silly, silly game. Memory Alpha states games can go for as long as seven or eight hours, and even if you win fair and square, there's still a pretty good chance the loser will be a massive, vagina-mouthed creature that queefs broken sentences like a nightmarish combination of The Hulk and Yoda. He will stab your heart as a reward for winning. I wouldn't try this unless your badass XP is at Picard levels.

#9. Pyramid (Battlestar Galactica)

How the Game is Played:

I think you're supposed to throw a ball into a board with a hole in it, and you can't move more than three steps with the ball before you have to throw it at a wall or a person. It's played on a triangle shaped court, hence the name. I think. Nobody really knows. None of the rules were spelled out because everyone was too busy drinking and crying and fucking hot robots. It seems to exist mostly so Starbuck can rub her sweaty body all over potential conquests in the greatest example of foreplay by way of sports since the beach sprint from Rocky III.

"I really, really want to play Pyramid."

Lasting Impact:

Well, if you shout "Go Panthers!" at a Comic-Con, maybe, like, four people will shout "C-Bucs Rule!" back in your general direction. Also, Michael Trucco's arms:

Awesomeosity Factor:

2.3 out of 10 - Unless you're Sam Anders, you're really not getting anything out of this game.

#8. Baseketball

How the Game is Played:

Take the framework of baseball, but instead of actually hitting a ball with a stick, all movement is decided by whether or not you can hit a free throw or sink a jumper. Disgustingly profane smack talk is not only allowed, but encouraged as a form of strategy in order to prevent the shooter from making his shot.

Lasting Impact:

Well, This guy expanded upon the official rules and went so far as to create an honest-to-god Baseketball league. It's like if the Star Wars Kid got caught taping himself dancing with a broomstick and decided to turn it into a touring roadshow. And because of the movie, we know what Trey Parker looks like when he does the Cartman voice. It's sort of like seeing Carroll Spinney wearing only the lower half of the Big Bird costume.

That shit just ain't right.

Awesomeosity Factor:

4.2 out of 10 - Really, aside from the part where having an encyclopedic knowledge of Your Mom jokes is beneficial, the game is pretty boring. Instead of using basketball rules, players are given giant sticks to hit each other with. But then the game gets rid of the sticks completely, leaving you with a version of regular ol' boring-ass baseball where nobody actually hits anything. Plus the movie kinda sucks.

#7. Podracing (Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace)

How the Game is Played:

Tether a tiny cockpit, via two cables, to massive jet engines. Race through rocky terrain filled with giant obstacles at thousands of miles an hour. Avoid the obstacles, the booby-trapped engines of other racers, and the space rednecks busting shots at you for three laps, and you might win lots of money for the slave-owning gnat who wired your head to explode should you escape servitude.

Red Letter Media will upload a six-part review of this screencap to YouTube shortly.

Lasting Impact:

People have been known to make reference to the sport after achieving something significant; scoring a touchdown, finishing a painting, getting a raise, accidentally destroying an orbital droid control platform--all are occasions to be celebrated with a victorious bellowing of "Now this is podracing!" If you wish to really put a period on it, awkwardly miss a high-five with your friend and begin doing "The Twist" with yourself.

The video games based on the podrace are pretty cool, too.

Awesomeosity Factor:

5.9 out of 10 - 63 percent of the people who still own a Phantom Menace DVD begin the movie at this sequence, and then upon finishing it, skip to the three-way lightsaber fight, and then eject the DVD and hope nobody saw them. It's also a convincing argument for letting select few NASCAR fans into the stadium with loaded firearms--look at how much more fun it was for the crowd when the Tuskens started potshotting turdfaced aliens in the Canyon Dune Turns!

#6. TRON

How the Game is Played:

Firstly, you must be accidentally digitized by The Dude's secret laser, located in the upstairs area of an arcade he managed between roadie duties for The Doobie Brothers and Metallica. Once inside the video game world, you will be fitted with a blacklight sensitive unitard for a more comfortable gaming experience.

There are five games in the PentathaTRON: Battle Tanks, where you drive a tank around a maze and shoot anything that moves; I/O Tower, where you attempt to enter the I/O tower by killing anything that moves; MCP Cone, where you smash the hell out of a giant Hot Dog on a Stick hat until it fits you; Discs, where you throw your glowing Frisbee at someone until you knock them into oblivion; and Light Cycles, where you ride a digital crotchrocket that violates all known emission standards by leaving a glowing wall as exhaust. You win by getting other riders to crash into said walls and de-rez.

Lasting Impact:

This:

And also this:

Awesomeosity Factor:

6.7 out of 10 - So awesome that many people aged 25-35 seem to completely forget the movie containing these events is almost as fun as slipping into a coma. The awesome actively overwrites your memory so your brain remembers the movie as a five-minute long series of disconnected images constantly exploding against the back of your eyeballs in a shower of pixels. Hopefully the sequel will recreate the world of TRON the way we'd like to remember it, not how it actually was.